Another Monday

Where do the weekends go? They go by in such a blur. It was a busy one for me and I managed to get alot accomplished in my quilting. I finally finished the mystery quilt I have been working on for a few weeks and I really like how the solid navy border finished it off. Eventually when I get to the quilting part of it, I will try my hand at free motion quilting. I have done stippling before and love to stipple, but I have only done it on smaller projects. I really want to try my hand at a full size quilt. I think I might meander around the center part of the quilt and try to find a nice border design for the navy border. I have seen those rolls of machine quilting designs for borders and blocks where you just lay the paper border onto your quilt, pin it down and quilt through the paper. I just need to find a nice design to use on it. So here it is!



Tonight I had another class to teach. My students are making a kaledioscope quilt using 4 patch blocks. They are all doing such a great job and they are really having alot of fun making them. Tonight was week #3 of 8. Next week they will start to put the sashing between the blocks to make the rows and the quilt top. They are getting very excited by now. Here are a few photos of them working away on their blocks and a few close ups.








By the way, I did try out that slow cooker chicken recipe yesterday and I was surprised how good it was. When I made it, the smell of cocoa (3 Tbsp of cocoa to be exact) was very strong and I was starting to wonder if it was going to taste okay. I was happy of the results. I will post it soon as I left my recipe book down to my Mother's place as she wanted to try out a recipe from that book herself this week. I will be down her way later this week, and will post it by the weekend should anyone be interested.

Along with my quilting and cooking, my good friend Marsha was very kind and shared some of her beautiful herbs with me. She has such a wonderful garden in her back yard. She has a fabulous herb garden, and full veggie garden and she and her husband have had such great results with their garden. So I decided to try my hand at drying my new herbs. With Marsha's guidance she showed me how to microwave the herbs til they were dry enough to crumble. I was amazed at how much they shrink!!!! Look at the before and after of the parsley!!


Here is my nice fresh oregano before I nuked it!!


Years ago when I lived in Nova Scotia I use to have a flower box and grew many different herbs. Since I moved back here to Newfoundland 8 years ago, I never had a chance until this summer to start growing them again. Unfortunately I started my seeds too late and only my dill gave me enough to fill a container. I will start my seeds much earlier next time. Now that the weather is changing I will have to start my herbs inside. I think I might try it during the fall and see how well they do growing inside. If anyone out there has grown their herbs indoors and have any tips for me, they will be greatly appreciated.

Well I should get going again. It is getting close to 11:30pm and I have another early rise in the morning for my "day" job.

Good Night and Sweet Dreams!

Cheers!
Andrea

Busy Weekend

Wow, what a busy few days! Sorry I couldn't post anything for a while, but when I go down to my Mother's she doesn't have a computer, so let alone the Internet.

Thursday night I had a good productive night working away on my mystery quilt I was making. I now have the blocks sewn and made into a quilt top. This afternoon I am going back down to Mum's to spend the day sewing with her. (Trevor is working all this week). I plan to put the border on this quilt and the top will then be done. I hope to get it layered and quilted before Christmas if all goes well. As you can see I have a little Assistant named Missy (or Miss Mew for short). She loves to inspect every quilt I make. She is not too amused though when I need to work on the piece she is lying on and has to move. Just before I took this photo she was sprawled right out on the quilt bathing herself. I was hoping to get a photo of her doing this, but wasn't fast enough. She doesn't look too amused.



I also pulled the fabrics from my stash for two table runners. One of these runners I will be teaching in November. The second one is another mystery I joined up for through www.quiltingboard.com Here is a photo of the fabrics I'll be using.

I am also going to try out a new slow cooker recipe today. I haven't used my slow cooker for months as I don't use it that much during the summer. I tend to play with it more in the cooler months. If this chicken recipe turns out good, I will be posting it here!

I also plan to post some photos of my students soon. They are doing such a wonderful job with their quilts.

Til Next Time!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Autumn Signs

I have to say that Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year. But the one thing I don't like about it is that the evening closes in so fast. It is not even 7:30pm here and already it is almost dark. Not the mention it seems as though overnight the temperature turned colder. Each morning I get up for work, I check the weather temperatures to give me an idea of what to wear. Today the high was to be 10 degrees celcius!! oooh I am not ready for the cool weather. This afternoon as I walked home from work there was a soft sprinkling of rain, but it was chilly. By the time I make it home some of that rain is actual hail!!!!!!!! I mean REALLY!! Not yet people!!!! I am just not ready for the cold right now.

The meatballs I made last night were a hit for tonight's supper. I hope to make a new recipe this weekend when I head down to Mum's place for a few days. This time I want to try out a new Slow Cooker recipe. I love my slow cooker especially during the colder months and I love to make lots of yummy stews. I chose a chicken recipe. If everything goes well I will post the recipe and a photo.

So now that supper is done and cleaned up and I took a little cat nap. It is now time to haul out my sewing gear again for another productive evening. Tonight I will start quilting the other Christmas tree skirt I have layered and ready to go. I should have that quilted within an hour. I then will get the bindings ready for the two skirts and sew those on. If time permits after that, I will try to complete the little Halloween dolls I am making for a swap I am doing through www.quiltingboard.com I have them made and clothed, I just need to finish the accessories before I send them to their two new homes next week. I will take photos soon, but I won't be able to post them until they arrive at their new homes. Right now it is a surprise as I know there are a few of my friends from that site that read my blog and I would hate to spoil anything should one of them be one who receive their halloween doll from me. Once I receive mine, I will post those too.

I think I mentioned briefly before that I teach quilting. Today I had to submit the courses I plan to teach for the Winter and Spring session at the local community centre I work with. I know I mentioned to my students on Monday night of my new blog, so I hope some of you had a chance to find my blog here and will follow along. I have two full size quilts starting January and two more starting in April. More to come in the following months about that, so stay tuned! One of the quilts in January will be a beginner/easy quilt, while the other will be more intermediate. The two in April will also be intermediate, but by then some of you will have completed a few of my classes and will like to try your hand at something more challenging. I look forward to seeing you in my future classes!

Well I'm off to do a bit of quilting. I am not sure if I will get to post anything here for the next day or so as I don't have access to the Internet at Mum's place. I am heading down there tomorrow night as Mum and I have a little social sewing/quilting group tht meet every Thursday night. All together there are five of us that get together to work on our projects. We have been sewing in this little social group for the last five years now and just love it! Tomorrow night I will try to complete the top of my mystery quilt. I just have to sew the rows together now and add the border.

Til next time!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

A Late Night Sewing

I just love it when I come home from work and then feel I really accomplished alot in the few hours between after supper and bedtime.

When I came home from work, I put on a couple of calazones and a greek salad. While the calazones were baking I started getting my ingredients together to make one of my favourite dishes... Honey Garlic Meatballs! I made a big pot of them to have for supper tomorrow. I made enough to freeze some for another meal.

For those of you who would like to try this recipe here it is. Oh by the way, the recipe came from the Company's Coming "Recipes for Today's Lifestyle - Beef Today". For those of you who don't eat red meat, I'm sure you can subsitute the mince beef for mince turkey, etc.

Honey Garlic Meatballs

Meatballs
2lbs Lean Ground Beef
1/2-1 cup of bread crumbs (you decide if you want more or less)
2 Large eggs
1 tsp Salt (optional.... I try to avoid salt in many recipes these days)
1/4 tsp of Cayenne (I didn't have any of this in my spice drawer so I used corriander)

Sauce
1 Tbsp Margarine
8 Garlic cloves, minced
14oz can Canned stewed tomatoes, with juice diced
3/4 cup of Liquid Honey (sometimes I add more for taste)
2 tsp Cornstarch
1/4 cup Soy Sauce

Combine the 5 meatball ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well. Form into 1 1/2" balls. Baked on an ungreased 2 quart casserole dish or baking stone. Melt the margarine in a medium saucepan. Sauté the garlic until soft but not browned. Add the tomatoes and honey. Mix the cornstarch with the soy sauce an stir into the tomato mixture. Bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat. Simmer, uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the baked meatballs to the pot and simmer for about a ½ hour to mix all the flavours through.

I like to serve them over a bed of rice!

Enjoy!

So with supper all cleaned up and the meatballs simmering nicely on the stove, I decided to set up my sewing machine on the dining room table (I don't have a sewing room... YET.....)
I mentioned how I am addicted to this great quilting forum at www.quiltingboard.com well I got involved along with a few others making a Mystery Tote Bag. I was determined to finish that bag tonight!!! From 8:30-11:30 I worked away at it. And the little darling is FINALLY finished!!!! So what do you think?



I plan to take this bag back and forth to my quilting classes I teach. I will take it with me this Saturday morning when I teach my crazy patch class.

So its now after midnight, I have to get up again at 7ish am to get ready for the "day" job. Sigh... only 3 more days to the weekend and more time to SEW SEW SEW!!! I plan to get back at my Mystery quilt and crumb quilt then... umm along many other things I plan to get done this weekend.

well sweet dreams to you all!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

The Start of Another Week

Nothing too exciting to talk about today as it is Monday and that means back to the “real” job, my Monday to Friday 8:30-4:30 job. I would much prefer to be home sewing happily away on my pile of UFOs that one day I’m afraid will topple over and bury me. Ahh but if that happens at least I will die with a smile on my face!!! But I have come to the conclusion as I’m sure most of my fellow quilters have as well that I can’t die until all my projects are completed, and the rate I am going I’m figuring I’ll be at least 120 years old!!! Has anyone ever made a list of all the UFOs they have to work on? I am only 36 so I have lots of quilting ahead of me!!!

One of my favourite sites to go to is www.quiltersboard.com It is a wonderful quilting forum with so many talented and friendly men and women. Not to mention along with their amazing creativity, you couldn’t ask for a more beautiful group of friends. I have made such wonderful friendships with these people. They are kind, supportive, creative, crazy (at times, but nothing a bit of chocolate and more fabric won’t cure) and full of so many ideas! I highly recommend all of you (if you are not already) to join this special group of quilters. I promise you, you will be happy you did!

So on this site, one lady came up with a UFO challenge. She suggested to those who were interested to try and get to work on your UFOs and complete as many as you can before the end of the year. Of course I had to count myself in to this challenge. I then had to decide what UFOs to pick and complete. I came up with two I would love to complete. I would love to finish more, but I do have to be realistic too as Christmas is only a few months away (in fact only 6 more pay cheques away… yep I counted) I need to complete more Christmas gifts and work on the projects I want to teach in the new year.

UFO #1 to complete: The “Orange Crush” Mystery Quilt from Bonnie’s www.quiltville.com Another FABULOUS, addictive and inspiring website to check out! I made all the blocks for this quilt back in early summer, but haven’t had the chance to make them into the actual quilt. I am happy to report I have started sewing all the blocks into rows. The rows are made and now ready to sew together!

UFO #2 to complete: I want to get back at the crumb quilt I started making back in the Spring. I thought I would get back at that one tonight when I teach my class. Once the girls are settled away, know the next step they have to do with their 4-posies kaleidoscope quilt and are happily sewing away, I will take out my little featherweight machine and start on my 7” square crumbs. I have about 45 made now, and I want to make another 15 to give me 60 crumbs to put into a quilt. Maybe if I get real excited I’ll make more. It won’t surprise me as crumb blocks are so fun to make!

I will keep you posted how my UFO challenges progress. I will post photos of them soon too!

Well I suppose I should get back to the grind of that ‘day’ job. Only one more hour left to the day. The afternoon break is over. Sigh……….. just another hour to go and then I can get ready to play at my ‘fun’ job of teaching!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea

Christmas Gifts

So I decided to spend today working on a few Christmas gifts. I find I have to start early as I have many gifts to make and I need lots of time to get them all done in time. I remember one year not that long ago that I left my gift making too late and one of my gifts I literally finished binding the placemats around 7pm Christmas Eve. I wrapped them up frantically before heading out to visit friends and family before Midnight Mass. Those placemats were opened around 10 that night!!!!! I decided then and there to NEVER leave things to the very last minute again!

I've decided to make a bunch of Christmas tree skirts as a few gifts. I made the tops of them back in February or March of this year, and then put them aside to work on something else. Now I have started layering and quilting them.

I have been on my machine for the last couple of hours, and just taking a little break before going at it again. Here is just one of the ones I am working on. It's a little bit wrinkly but then it has been folded up for a few months. I have since pressed it out nice and smooth before I layered it. I have a little more quilting to do on this little darling and it's ready for binding. I will work on it for another hour before going out to Costco to get a few groceries and then Trevor and I have been invited to Mum's for supper tonight.

Getting There

So today, I decided to work a little more on how to make a blog of my own and to customize it a little more to my liking. Eventually I would like to add more quilty looking things to the background, maybe something like a fabric background or something. The last time I worked with HTML was in university and that was a few years ago now. This is definetely a learning curve for me. Ahh, but I am up for the challenge :)

So, today I added a new colour look to my page, and learned how to add a photo to the corner. I also learned how to add photos to my posts as you will see below.

I thought I would share with everyone the quilt I made for my boyfriend Trevor. You see, I have learned in the almost year and a half we have been together that he is the biggest Van Halen fan I ever met! He had been after me for a year now to make him a quilt. Little did he know that I started doing the research and the collecting of fabrics and such for this quilt since Christmas! I wanted to make him a real one of a kind quilt.

Last year he and his good buddy, Jody, went to see the big Van Halen Renunion Concert in Toronto. They took a few photos and they had a great time. When he returned, while he was working, I would sneak into his computer and copy some of those photos to my own external portable harddrive. Over the following months, I ordered the funky guitar fabric off eBay, as well as sew on patches from the rock group. I then photo transfered various photos of the band from the present to their big hair days in teh 80's.

August 28th, was his birthday. He had no idea what was in the big gift wrapped box. He was very suprised and very happy. Here are the photos below.






Andrea